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Himalaya box art

Himalaya

Game ID: GID0159003
Game Info
Year
2004
Collection
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Description

As the Chief of a Himalayan high plateau tribe; Dolpo-pa, Bhotia, Sherpa, or Tamang, you lead your yak's caravan from one village to another through snowy crests and risky paths in order to collect the goods necessary to the development of your tribe.

Meanwhile, you will increase the political, religious and economical influence of your tribe. By collecting goods (salt, barley, tea, jade, and gold), you can make offers to monasteries, send out delegations to different regions or bargain to increase your livestock. All this to become the most prosperous caravaneer in all of the Himalaya!

Players program their caravans around the paths on the Himalayan plateau to collect various goods, and then deliver them. Each turn players plan in advance six moves for their caravan, trying to second-guess what other players will do to their best advantage. Delivering goods allows the player to increase their influence in one of three separate categories - each delivery allows you to advance your position in two of the three categories. Religious influence is marked by the number and value of your stupas in buildings on the board, political influence is marked by the number of sherpas you have in the regions between the paths on the board, and economical influence is marked by the total number of yaks you have on your delivery disks.

The scoring is unique to the game, in the 4 player game anyway (the player count the game is primarily designed to be played with). To determine the winner you first score up religious influence, and the player with the least religious influence is eliminated, and their remaining pieces are removed from the board. Next the player with the least political influence is eliminated. The remaining two players decide the winner by who has the greatest economic influence. This unusual scoring is what makes this game different from many other similar games.

Description

As the Chief of a Himalayan high plateau tribe; Dolpo-pa, Bhotia, Sherpa, or Tamang, you lead your yak's caravan from one village to another through snowy crests and risky paths in order to collect the goods necessary to the development of your tribe.

Meanwhile, you will increase the political, religious and economical influence of your tribe. By collecting goods (salt, barley, tea, jade, and gold), you can make offers to monasteries, send out delegations to different regions or bargain to increase your livestock. All this to become the most prosperous caravaneer in all of the Himalaya!

Players program their caravans around the paths on the Himalayan plateau to collect various goods, and then deliver them. Each turn players plan in advance six moves for their caravan, trying to second-guess what other players will do to their best advantage. Delivering goods allows the player to increase their influence in one of three separate categories - each delivery allows you to advance your position in two of the three categories. Religious influence is marked by the number and value of your stupas in buildings on the board, political influence is marked by the number of sherpas you have in the regions between the paths on the board, and economical influence is marked by the total number of yaks you have on your delivery disks.

The scoring is unique to the game, in the 4 player game anyway (the player count the game is primarily designed to be played with). To determine the winner you first score up religious influence, and the player with the least religious influence is eliminated, and their remaining pieces are removed from the board. Next the player with the least political influence is eliminated. The remaining two players decide the winner by who has the greatest economic influence. This unusual scoring is what makes this game different from many other similar games.

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All mentions
Browse transcript mentions, sentiments, pros/cons, mechanics, topics, quotes, and references.
Total mentions: 1
This page: 1
Sentiment: pos 1 · mix 0 · neu 0 · neg 0
Mentions per page
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Video ebUG75vaxtQ Chairman of the Board Top List at 13:21 sentiment: positive
video_pk 87418 · mention_pk 228399
Chairman of the Board - Himalaya video thumbnail
Click to watch at 13:21 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
Highly Positive (personally)
Pros
  • Personally a huge hit
  • Strategic scoring and network building
  • Interesting element of dictated choices
Cons
  • Can be polarizing
Thematic elements
  • Hot air balloons, regions, pavilions
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
  • area influence — Placing pieces on rows/lines where the balloon lands.
  • Movement programming — Moving a hot air balloon around the board perimeter.
  • network building — Creating networks and launching balloons based on regions.
  • Set Collection — Scoring different goals, being next to pavilions, creating networks.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
  • this is another definitely a a forgotten gem in my opinion
  • this is definitely unlike any other kitti game that I've played
  • quite a frustrating game um but the hand management is extremely clever um and a very tense game as well
  • the cool thing about this game is the twist at the end where if you are the player who spent the most money you are automatically disqualified from winning
  • this one seems to be a bit more polarizing but it's a huge hit for me personally
  • brilliantly refined very sophisticated and streamlined gameplay um one of the best T placement games out there
  • definitely a deeper game than it first meets the eye and it's one of the best auction games ever made
  • wonderful game one of the purest games I have in my collection and one of my favorites full stop an absolute work of art
  • well Riders was fine Dragon Riders so Dragon master was decent royal visit if you like the tug-of war system you might like this one didn't quite work for me same go to Blue Moon Legends very interesting World designed game but one that didn't quite suit my game style
  • definitely one of the highest regarded kitu games and for good reason it's my second favorite kitu game
  • this one is another auction Style game where you have fixed bids so you cannot just bid what you want you have four tokens at any time and all you're doing is you are revealing these tokens or these tiles out in this kind of push your luck mechanism
  • lots of layers lots of wrinkles um definitely a deeper game than it first meets the eye
  • it's one of the best auction games ever made I think it might be my favorite
  • this is one of his root building style games as you have a a rack full of tiles you're using them to create huge chains of your particular color and trying to connect these different kind of cities together
  • gaml could not be more simple just simply place a TI or think two tiles or more than that at times onto the board and um score accordingly
References (from this video)
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